With the electronic industry's rapid movement toward surface mount technology, the technical problem of management of high-density integrated circuits, printed circuit boards, and ceramic chip carriers has become increasingly important. In the modern electronic industry, an important necessity is the rapid and accurate assembly of leads, terminals and contacts with the terminals and contact pads of integrated circuits, printed circuit boards, chip carriers or other substrates.
For economy and especially mass production, there is also need in the electronic industry for simple and reliable arrangements enabling a manufacturer to test the circuits of such substrates to determine whether quality is satisfactory before permanently interconnecting them in more complicated circuits. In many instances during testing of substrates having circuits on more than one surface it is important to test the circuit on only one surface and insulate the testing surface from the other.
There is further need in the electronic industry for improved leads, terminals and contacts which can be interconnected in a unitary arrangement for simultaneous handling during assembling operations with printed circuit boards or other substrates.